1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to radiological data processing and more particularly to a user-configurable radiological data transformation, routing, and archiving engine.
2. State of the Prior Art
Radiological data processing is a complex field since patient radiological data is stored across multiple facilities. In certain circumstances, doctors and other medical professionals need to be able to automatically pull relevant previous studies from these multiple facilities but encounter the problem that main patient identifiers, patient id for example, can vary from one facility to another. To be useful, patient data must be modified and integrated into a universal worklist where all of the patient's prior studies are accessible. In many cases information contained in structured reports must be read and modified and in certain circumstances, transformation, routing and archiving rules require that data be pulled from a DICOM data object or from DICOM structured reports as well.
Migration of patient radiological images and corresponding data to current standards is another problem and ensuring that all patient radiological data are brought to the same standard is a time-consuming process. Most hospitals hire a consulting company to develop a strategy and custom software for the migration. However PACS, RIS and EMR vendors are usually not willing to cooperate and consequently many hospitals think they have no option but to commit a lot of time and money to having a universal worklist.
Prior art solutions include case by case, customized solutions. The customized approach can be effective but presents clients with a number of challenges. Firstly it can be very difficult to maintain someone else's custom code. Secondly, the client becomes fully dependent upon the provider of its custom solution so changes, even apparently minor ones, can become very expensive. And filially, industry standard protocols such as HL7, DICOM, XDS-I, XML and SNMP are not necessarily used which can result in support issues.
Therefore there is a need for a user-configurable radiological data transmission, routing, and archiving engine that provides for integration of patient radiological studies into a universal worklist, migration of radiological data to current standards, and user-configurable transformation, routing and archiving of radiological data.